We’ve made a lot of adjustments under the hood, like improving memory utilization so we can show more buildings, layers, and user content. We improved our shaders (that’s graphics-speak for small programs that run inside your graphics processor) to make the atmosphere draw faster. We also worked to reduce stuttering (known as frame drops) to provide an even smoother experience as you fly around the globe. When we draw imagery, we now use compression technology to use less memory and graphics resources. We know that waiting for a program to start-up can be really frustrating, so we improved our start-up time by 25%. In our Google Earth API (which allows developers to include Google Earth right in their websites), we have made API calls significantly faster, which means that our developers can now do even more.

You can download version 5.1 here. In addition, the Windows version of 5.1 automatically loads the browser plug-in for those users, which should signifianctly increase the number of users that have the plug-in installed.

Earth is Square has a neat post today about viewing Centralia, Pennsylanvia using fresh Bird’s Eye imagery on Bing Maps. Centralia was an active town of about 1000 residents back in the early 1980’s, but now is home to only nine people. The reason is due to an underground coal fire that’s been burning since the 60’s, and will continue burning for as many as 250 more years.

In 1984, congress provided $42 million to relocate residents out of town. Once gone, most of the buildings were demolished. A recent episode of Life After People (an excellent series on the History Channel) featured Centralia as an example of what happens 25 years after humans leave a city (building decay, etc).

I was hoping that Google’s Historical Imagery feature would show aerial footage from a time when the city was populated, but it only goes back to 1993. Below are some before and after photos. Check it out on Google Maps (with StreetView imagery) or Bing Maps to explore further.

Before the evacuation

Then and now

Centralia 1993, as seen in Google Earth using the Historical Imagery slider

Centralia today, in Bing Maps Bird’s Eye

Centralia today, in Google Maps Street View. The fog makes it even creepier.

According to the Google Earth Blog, there has been another imagery update for Google Earth. The full list of updated areas is still coming in, but so far they’ve found updates in Scotland, Brazel, USA, Englad, Norway and Spain.

Sorry for being so quiet lately. I’ve got a few big projects going on and I’ve been away from the Google Earth scene for a few days. However, things have been very active and there’s quite a lot to see!

More Historical Imagery — Google has added more historical imagery to Google Earth. This is an awesome new feature in Google Earth 5.0, and it’s great that they’re continuing to add more data to it.

A great lesson about Google Earth imagery — Like Frank, I often talk to people that assume Google Earth imagery is real-time, or at least close to it. As you probably know, that’s far from accurate. It takes quite a lot of work to get imagery into Google Earth, and this article does a great job of explaining it.